One fresh spring morning I woke up to the frantic clucking of my friend Clover. Suspecting trouble, I grabbed my trusty spyglass and hopped over to where Clover sat looking distressed. "My chick Bella is lost!" she cried. I reassured her and set out looking for clues. It had rained last night, so I looked in the fresh mud for footprints. Suddenly I spied little chick prints wobbling off through the mud. There was a tear in the chicken wire fence where Bella must have escaped. Crouching low, I squeezed through the gap. I followed the prints through the mud, but as I reached the farmyard grass, the prints disappeared.

I gave a squawk of dismay and hustled back to the coop. I told Clover about the prints, and she decided to come with me to look for more clues.

We wriggled under the gap in the fence and followed the prints until the grass. "Hmmm", Clover said, "It appears that Bella went in the direction of the duck pond. Let's go check there". The duck pond was beautiful, with the sounds of swaying cattails, dragonflies buzzing over the sparkling water and the ‘cheep, cheep' of -"wait!" I exclaimed. "Is that cheeping I hear?" "It is!" Clover cried, and we ran over to the other side of the pond. Bella was perched on a rock at the edge of the pond. But the rock was surrounded by a thin ribbon of water. Bella saw Clover and chirped excitedly. Clover looked relieved. "How did you get there?" She exclaimed. Bella whimpered "I couldn't sleep last night so I decided to go explore. I was perching on this rock when I fell asleep. I was protected from the rain but the water levels rose!"

Something had to be done to save this stranded chick! I left Clover with Bella and waddled back to the coop. I walked up the ramp into my coop when I had a sudden inspiration. Ramp! Of course! We could use a ramp to transport Bella to safety! I rushed into the coop to tell the hens my idea. Everyone thought it sounded great. I took Sylvie, Jo, Jennifer and our powerful rooster, Uncle Strut with me. We hustled out to where Bella was stranded and began to hunt for large pieces of wood to make a ramp. Then, we carefully laid out sticks and an old board stretching from the rock to shore. Finally our ramp was finished. Bella took a cautious step. Wham! As soon as her tiny foot touched it, our ramp went tumbling down. Bella just managed to jump out of the way in time. She chirped sadly, looking down at the ruined ramp. "We have to try again" said Jennifer, and we all nodded. We carefully laid out another ramp, with reinforcements. Bella looked scared, but gently stepped on. The ramp held! She ran across, straight into her mother's outstretched wings. "Three Cheers for Gertrude McCluck!" Everyone cheered "Hip, hip hooray!"